St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

asked.
    “There hasn’t been a formal autopsy yet, but all the injuries look like what you’d expect from a nasty wreck. Why?”
    Carly barely heard. All she could think of was the sniper on Castillo Ridge, able to fire toward the ranch or toward the far side of the ridge.
    She looked at Dan.
    He shook his head slightly. “Thanks for all your help, Gus. Now go back and spend time with your family. Give them all hugs for me, okay?”
    “Here’s my hat, what’s my hurry, is that it?” Gus asked Dan.
    “Yes. Don’t call me, Gus. Don’t be seen with me. And I’d stay clear of Mom, too. Just for a while.”
    “What’s going on?” Gus demanded.
    “I don’t know. Until I do, stay away from me, and from her.”
    “What about Carly?” Gus asked.
    “Same goes,” she said in a low voice. “Stay away. Think of it as a temporary quarantine.” At least I hope it’s temporary.
    “Please,” Dan said to his brother. “Think of your kids.”
    “You’re serious.” Gus stared at his brother. “You’re really serious.”
    “Yes.”
    “Does Mom know?”
    “Don’t ask her,” Dan said. “Don’t ask anyone. Don’t trust anyone.”
    “Even—”
    “Anyone,” Dan said curtly.
    Gus blew out a breath, turned, and stalked to the front door. “See you around, bro. And when I do, you’d better have an explanation for me. A good one.”
    The door closed behind him. Hard.

TAOS
MONDAY AFTERNOON
63
    CARLY STARED AT THE FRONT DOOR , THEN AT DAN . “ ARE YOU THINKING WHAT I ’ M thinking?” she asked.
    “That somebody could be getting away with murder around here?” he said.
    “Isn’t it the only statute that doesn’t have any limitations?”
    “Yes.”
    “But I’m having a tough time connecting the past with the present.”
    “So am I. There are too many people who hated the Senator, and too many good reasons for someone to kill him. Or…”
    “What?”
    “Blackmail him.”
    “Does that help us?”
    “Just one more handful of pieces that don’t fit anywhere. Why?”
    Carly frowned. “When I get to this point in a genealogy, too many facts and no coherent pattern, I stop and take another approach, another way of looking at or getting to information.”
    Dan nodded. It was what he did, too. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it just confused the issue more. Either way, it was a new wall to beat against.
    “What if we approach this a different way?” Carly asked slowly. “What if we assume that Winifred wasn’t clinical on the subject of the Senator and the Senator’s son? So we assume there was a rational aspect to her hatred.”
    Dan went still. “Go on.”
    “What if we also assume that your grandmother was more than a pathological liar and an addict? That maybe she knew what she was talking about, at least some of the time? Again, a possible rational basis for her actions.”
    His eyebrows lifted. “That’s a stretch.”
    “Wait.”
    Carly went to the bedroom, returned with her recorder, and found what she wanted on the second try. Diana Duran’s voice whispered into the room, followed by Dan’s.
    “It’s happening again.”
    “What is?”
    “Evil. Death that shouldn’t have been. My mother, screaming and laughing, then just screaming.”
    “Why was she screaming?”
    “Because the dead walk among the living. I know this for truth. My mother’s friend saw it. Susan. She told my mother and my mother told me. My mother saw the ghost of another man. A dead man walking, using the name of life. Two days later she was dead.”
    Then Carly’s voice, gently questioning, “What other man did she see?”
    “Cain.”
    After a moment, Dan’s voice asked another question.
    Diana’s haunted voice answered. “ I remember. I remember the exact words. They live in my dreams. Nightmares. She said, ‘The dead walk and eat at my father’s ranch. Cain lives and Abel is dead. ’”
    Carly stopped the recorder. “The Senator had two sons to speak of.”
    Dan looked at the envelope he still held. “And a lot he didn’t speak of.”
    “Is it possible that Josh killed his older brother?”
    Dan’s eyes narrowed. He went to his computer, called up files, searched. “Not likely. The newspaper articles about the Senator’s valiant sons in Vietnam make it clear that Josh wasn’t there when the heir apparent was. In any case, there were witnesses to the older son’s death. Viet Cong. He died saving the lives of his fellow rangers. If he’d survived, he’d have so many medals he’d